Where soul meets body

Danielle Furman, a wellness intuitive, listens to intuitive messages to help her clients enhance their health, she says.
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MARTY CAIVANO
)

While James' parents were looking for extra-wide wheelchairs to accommodate the bowed shape of his disfigured legs, and doctors were fitting him for leg braces, his grandmother had another plan.

Directed by "Divine Source," she worked on James every three to four days. By connecting with God's energy, using a distant healing technique, Dienst, living in California at the time, says she left her physical body and entered James's 2-year-old body in Colorado. There, following God's lead, she says she shifted his defective gene into a healthy one, and "witnessed" the realignment of his deformed legs.

His grandma, Judy Miller Dienst, now of Louisville, calls herself a "medical intuitive."

"I'm the go-between. I help the person step into their self-healing abilities. That's my job," Dienst says.

And she claims it works, pointing to a long list of success stories on her Web site. At the top: James's before and after photos.

At age 2, he was diagnosed with Blount's Disease, a growth disorder of the shin bones. Two years later, a picture shows him standing on straight legs. From the day of diagnosis, doctors suggested surgery and indicated a low chance of natural reversal, Dienst says.

Dienst does not diagnose, prescribe or claim a cure; only licensed medical personnel can do that. But on her Web site, Dienst calls James's story "proof to show the world that these techniques work!"

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On the other hand, the National Center for Biotechnology Information reports a 1 in 3 chance of the disease healing spontaneously on its own.

Did James heal intuitively? Or just naturally?

Skeptics say there is no scientific proof that medical intuitives are anything other than a scam. Although they acknowledge the power of positive thinking, some local scientists refused to even go on the record about medical intuition, saying it was so ludicrous that it wasn't worth discussing, and that they didn't want their names associated with it in any way.

They also point out that services come at a price, and that unethical practitioners can easily take advantage of someone in a fragile physical and emotional state.

Trying to decipher the root of medical intuition is complicated, highly anecdotal, full of assumptions -- but also increasingly popular, regardless of whether it leaves you incredulous or hopeful. Even Oprah has featured Caroline Myss, who is credited with coining the term "medical intuitive" and has published five New York Times bestsellers.

Still, the Grillo Health Information Center in Boulder reported it could not find any reliable studies specifically about medical intuitives.

As the idea -- although not so much the clear evidence -- of intuitive healing gains momentum, Boulder County's scene is bursting with dozens of businesses with long-time spiritual workers, such as Dienst (who also claims she can instantly heal bones via phone), to a Boulder scientist who says the concept makes sense, logically. The Boulder Healing Arts Association Web page alone lists 45 practitioners under the "energetic healing/intuitive guidance" category, although not all of them are specifically medically focused.

The New Age perspective

Rhonda O'Brien calls it "feeling around in the dark."

"I close my eyes. Let's say that I just see a landscape with a rainbow. That's how a reading might start for me, watching a scene," says the Longmont psychic medium who also practices an ancient Hawaiian energy modality called Ancient Rainbow Conscious Healing. "Then maybe I'll hear something or feel something or just know something. That's literally how it is for me."

O'Brien isn't specifically a medical intuitive, but she says health issues come to her empathically, physically (like a pain in her left hip) or visually while she does regular readings. An hour reading costs $105. Energy work is $65.

Often what she senses are problems that doctors don't pick up on, such as glands not functioning correctly. Sometimes people come to her when doctors cannot pinpoint the problem, she says

O'Brien does not claim to help heal broken bones. Instead, she offers more of a "wellness reading," suggesting dietary and lifestyle improvements. Sometimes, she treats clients with visualizations and walks them through letting go of emotional components that might be sparking the physical problems. Other times, she supplies clients with different levels of energy with her hands, but she says it is always up to clients to heal themselves.

"I always say go to a doctor, too," she says. "I recommend it being more supplemental."

Danielle Furman describes humans as four layers: spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical. The different layers affect one another -- think about how nervous emotions can create a stomach ache, for example -- so as she sees it, true health is keeping all of the layers in balance.

"We're doing the same thing the medical community is. The medical model is designed to help the body get back to homeostasis, or balance," says Furman, a Boulder-based wellness intuitive with the business Inviting Balance. "Physical health is just one aspect of wellness."

Furman has logged more than 600 sessions during the past few years. At first, she also offered integrative massage therapy, but demand drove her to abandon bodywork and focus on intuitive sessions. She also is a representative for an anti-aging product that she says complements her intention to empower people to take charge of their own health.

Furman charges $125 per session or $175 for a training session. Clients can buy a package of 12 for $1,500.

She says most people come to her because they "feel stuck on some level." For example, one client was suffering with chronic respiratory problems she couldn't shake. While talking, it came out that three people close to her had died in the past year.

"While she was able to receive substantial medical help for the symptoms, the medical community was not empowered to look at the root cause outside the physical level," Furman says.

She guided the woman to take action on all four levels. Emotionally, she became aware of the connection between the grief and the respiratory problems. Physically, she started the anti-aging product. Intellectually, she began counseling with a psychotherapist. Spiritually, she joined a grief support group at her church.

"Her improvements were huge. Plus, what do you think that does for her downstream confidence to handle future issues?" Furman says. "It's huge. God, I love what I do."

What Dienst says she has witnessed is grander yet. The Louisville woman has been practicing medical intuition for 35 years, before there was a word for it. Over the years, she says it has become increasingly accepted by the mainstream. And today, she does not worry about trying to convince skeptics anymore.

"If they don't have a belief system that accepts something greater -- God, the Universe, Buddha -- something that supports us to move into a healthy place on all levels, and that there are those of us willing to bring that forward -- if they don't believe it, they won't receive it, either," Dienst says.

She says she helped one woman via phone instantaneously shrink a bone spur at the top of her spine. Dienst says she also helped heal her son's broken thumb and another woman's prolapsed heart valve.

Loretta Ivory, of Centennial, was having extreme pain in her heel and couldn't walk when she sought out Dienst about four years ago. Doctors couldn't figure out the problem, and they told her she was just going to have to live with it, Ivory says.

"I found that completely and totally unacceptable. I was ready to go out on a limb (and try intuitive healing) and say, 'OK, maybe it won't work, but then I will know one more thing that doesn't work,'" Ivory says. "And lo and behold, it did."

At first, she says, the idea was "a little freaky and didn't really fit into any of my education."

Ivory is a nurse, certified midwife and a professor of health and medical classes at Red Rocks Community College in Denver.

Ivory says she called Dienst with no expectations. During their phone session, Ivory says Dienst alternated between questions and silence, while Ivory felt nothing physically. After, she says she felt a little tired and took a nap. She woke up and her heel felt better. After three sessions, the pain was completely gone and never returned.

"It just blew my mind," Ivory says. "Can I explain it? No. But I know that it works. I've seen it work. I've felt it work."

A believing scientist?

Ivory says she regularly refers people to Dienst, urging skeptics to check out two books. For the "nitty gritty" science viewpoint: "Life Force, the Scientific Basis," by Claude Swanson, who was educated as a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. For an easier to understand explanation: "The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe," by Lynne McTaggart.

The Boulder Community Hospital offers some alternative treatments for patients with cancer, including Reike, spiritual energy work that claims to relax and promote healing. But the hospital doesn't offer medical intuitives, according to Rich Sheehan, spokesman.

"Alternative medicine providers are traditionally community-based," he says. "I've never had anyone inquire about that service or to be affiliated with us."

And he says the hospital does not recommend clients to services provided through the hospital or its affiliated physicians.

Alan McAllister has a doctorate in physics from the University of Texas at Austin. He spent 15 years working at both the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doing solar magnetic field study, and he's widely published in that field.

The Boulder man is also a hypnotherapist, unlicensed psychotherapist and has been doing intuitive work for 13 years. He offers free, walk-in "healing spaces" on Tuesday and Thursdays. Regular sessions are $100 an hour, with options for a sliding scale.

"You have a right and a left brain, and I've always used both in parallel," McAllister says. "It's all about energy, and the questions are the same: Why are we here? How does this work? Who are we?"

McAllister likes to look at New Age concepts through his scientist goggles. And although he admits there is no scientific proof of medical intuition, he thinks there is enough "proof of concept" or probable cause to indicate something is going on, at least on a small scale.

"To me, the heart of the scientific method is to do something and notice what happens, and then decide whether to do it again or do something different," McAllister says. "As you accumulate experience, eventually the theory will follow. (Skeptics) put the cart before the horse, saying if science can explain spirituality to me, then I'll believe it. But I experience it, and let the explanations follow."

In fact, he says, he has learned how to minimize burns, bee stings and mosquito bites without touching them. He has not witnessed bigger healings, such as cancer cures or bone setting, but that doesn't mean they can't happen, he says.

He refers to the placebo effect. Occasionally, such as with some anti-depressant trials, the placebo works as well as -- or better than -- the actual drugs to change the chemistry of the brain, the Washington Post reported in 2002. As much as 85 percent of the efficacy of some cough medicines is attributed to the placebo effect, according to information from the Grillo Center.

Some scientists write this off as a random coincidence.

Instead of studying the drugs, McAllister wonders why scientists aren't focusing on this inexplicable elephant in the room -- measurable numbers that show the brain can change people's physical experiences.

"If you choose not to pay attention to that in your model, that's OK, but that doesn't mean it's not real," McAllister says.

Plus, he says, the tricky thing about measuring intuitive healing is that it's hard to control.

"There are so many variables and the belief system and readiness of a person to have that healing, not only consciously but unconsciously, is a huge factor -- probably the biggest factor," he says.

His explanations are lengthy, spanning chemistry (how neurotransmitters and hormones are affected by emotions, for example) quantum physics and relying heavily on the premise that energy -- whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual -- is meant to flow.

But when it comes down to it, he admits most of his support for intuitive healing is assumptions.

"There's always a prime assumption in any logical system. So I choose to assume that there's an energetic, spiritual foundation to the universe," McAllister says. "At the end of the day you can't prove it -- or disprove it."

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